Jiyeh is a small coastal town in Lebanon built upon the ancient city of
Porphyreon, which
is said to be the place where a giant fish delivered Jonah to the shore.

On July 14th 2006 a coastal power station in Jiyeh was attacked in an
Israeli air strike
causing over 20,000 tons of oil to spill into the Mediterranean Sea.
Although there has
been relatively little information regarding the ecological impact of this
maassive spill a
series of sattelite photos show the dispersion pattern of the oil. These
patterns appear
as Baroque-like ornaments that distort the contour of the Lebanese coast
line. The
music represents the evolution of these patterns and providing an auditory
display of
the enormity of this disaster.

bio

Jonathan Berger is a composer and researcher. Berger's research includes
developing
methods and tools for effective auditory display of complex data. His
recent recording
of chamber music for strings will be released this Spring by Naxos
recordings on their
American Masters series.

Since the oil dissemenated in a generally northern direction, image scans were done from south to north (by flipping the image).
In addition to Woon Seung Yeo's raster scan synthesis ( http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~woony/works/raster ) which provided the following basic sound source materials:

<Examples>

The dimensions and shape of the spill shown in each sattelite image is represented in the following ways:
The width of the spill at each sampled location is sonified by varying the filter bandwidth (measured south to north each 25 pixels)